Food, glorious food!

Remember how Vivian made it onto the charts at her 1 year appointment? And that for a week or so before that appointment she was eating and drinking like a starved refugee?

Well, I'm not sure which body snatcher took over my sweet delicate petite girl, but she has continued to eat like that (by which I mean, like a pig) ever since. Well, okay, she's not downing 35 oz of milk per day anymore, but she's still guzzling that bottle the minute she gets her hands on it. And as for solids, well . . .

She's finally taken a liking to table food! In fact, she has started refusing baby food for the bigger finger foods I put on her tray. Today, I discovered that in addition to the dairy allergy she shares with her brother, she is also allergic to eggs. But before we discovered that, she ate quite a handful of macaroni salad.

She eats tomatoes, Cheerios! (I know, all babies eat Cheerios, but Vivian has refused them for some time), potatoes, scrapple, chicken, blueberries, cantaloupe, broccoli--in fact, I can't remember the last time she refused anything I offered her.

And for a girl with no real teeth to speak of, she gums that stuff pretty well.

Not to mention, (drumroll, please) she can now hold her own bottle! At 13 months old! My god, she's a prodigy, for sure!

Anyway, the point of all this is I'm starting to wonder if she is going to be a petite thing after all. True, she is still in some 3-6 month clothes, but she's got to grow soon, at this rate of consumption. I was always a little child--held back in nursery school because the pediatrician thought I was too small, always first when we lined up by height, front row for every photograph, etc.--so I was not surprised when Vivian displayed similar characteristics.

Thing is, that is the ONLY characteristic she exhibits which mirrors mine. In every other way, she is Lance's daughter. In fact, she even has olive skin, which is completely unheard of in my fair-haired, blue-veined, pale-faced family. Not even my husband has the enviable olive skin, though his father, grandmother and several cousins do.

So I've been kind of enjoying this little tiny girl, happily watching her eat small portions and grow ever so slowly, since for once, it is familiar to me. Now that she is eating like a teenager at McDonald's, she seems even less my own child.

But I don't really care, since she's so damn cute.